


steady in her bones

by somehowunbroken



Category: DCU
Genre: Gen, Gotham POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 12:42:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3120539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/pseuds/somehowunbroken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gotham doesn't have many children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	steady in her bones

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about Jack Hawksmoor and then I was thinking about Jason Todd and. Then this. Just sort of happened.

Gotham doesn't have many children.

The others do, she knows. She's seen the glowing pride in Keystone's smile, heard about how lovely Metropolis' own are, felt and read and listened to tale upon tale of the glories the cities have heaped upon them, their shining jewels, their children who love them.

Gotham has few, but she holds her head high and walks on.

She knows their tread through her streets, feels it when they pat her buildings and ride her rails. She hears them tell others, those who live within her borders but who aren't her own, that Gotham's a great place, really, you just have to know how to live there. She knows them by their places, Bryant child and Robinson child and Park Row child. They are hers. She knows them.

Sometimes her childrens' steps grow careless, weak, heavy, and when one of them slumps in her doorways she weeps with them. She knows she is a difficult mother. She knows, and she tries. The streets crumble and crack and form again when she tells them to, and the wind howls through the alleys, screaming at those who are not her children. They shudder and grumble about how awful she is, but her children smile, weary as she is around the edges, and they touch her sidewalks and struggle to their feet.

Gotham thinks she was beautiful, once, but it's been so long that she's no longer sure. She's ugly now, scarred and beaten and broken too many times, but she's still strong where it counts. She's strong for those who love her, and she loves them back with all of the ferocity in her bones, steel and stone and electricity held together with fear and hope.

Sometimes, though, Gotham's love isn't enough, and when her child, her Park Row child is plucked from her streets and torn to pieces before she's ready to give him up, she shrieks. When they tear a hole in her and lower him into her grasp, she wails and beats at the box they put him in. When they cover him with dirt, she screams and screams until there's a spark, something within her child that grows and grows until he's gasping, climbing, tearing at his box and his hands and her dirt.

She moves it. She crumbles it into ash around him and gives him a boost out of the hole, and when he takes a few unsteady steps upon her surface, she finally stills.

Her child is home. He's breathing and walking within her borders. He's hers and she won't let him go, not without a fight.

Gotham doesn't have many children, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> /hands
> 
> [Follow me on tumblr](http://somehowunbroken.tumblr.com) for some less weird stuff, probably. Maybe. Not really. It's all pretty out there.


End file.
